The social added value of using People-Nearby Applications with community-related aims: disentangling ubiquitous local community experiences

Local community experiences have become increasingly complex due to the spread of location-based social applications, which blur the boundaries between online and offline environments opening new relational, identity, and social opportunities. This contribution specifically deepens the paths through which the community-related use of dating People-Nearby Applications (PNAs, e.g., Tinder, Grindr) can impact users’ neighborhood experience. An online survey was administered to 595 Italian and Dutch users to detect their use of such applications with community-related aims, bridging and bonding social capital, feeling of involvement in their neighborhood community, and Sense of Community (SoC). A multiple mediation model was run with Structural Equation Modeling. Dating PNAs neighborhood-related use only showed a direct effect on users’ social capital and, through this, an indirect one on their SoC. This suggests the need to further look into the complexities brought about by local community experiences becoming ubiquitous as well as into the theoretical and practical implications stemming. A better understanding of the new, ubiquitous, paths through which citizens experience their neighborhoods could open new opportunities for interventions aimed at gluing the local social fabric.